


rinne

by ticoyuu



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: "i have a plan and it's flying by my farts" style, 2nd person POV / switches to 3rd, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, M/M, it stops being sad about halfway through idk this fic kinda plotted itself, kinda sorta sympathetic portrayal of loki fires, listen i count this as a happy ending let me live, not necessarily romantic, oh boy rarepair, there is character death but it's feh so uhhh how do i tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 22:10:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15895116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticoyuu/pseuds/ticoyuu
Summary: When there are countless possible worlds, endless iterations of what could-or-has been; finding a single individual is like hunting a particular droplet in the ocean, yet Jakob lives on, tireless, to seek his liege.--Until he’s no longer sure if he remembers what he’s been searching for, at the present point in time.(A background story for Jakob: Deliverer Foretold.)





	rinne

**Author's Note:**

> MAN I WISH I COULD WRITE AND LIKE NOT SACK MY SLEEP HOURS. BUT W/E IT'S FOR THE BETTER GOOD OR.. SOMETHING LIKE THAT.. anyway this literally started out as a mad combo of [yume ka itsutsu ka](https://youtu.be/87dXXyIOV4A) (the utawarerumono: itsuwari no kamen ED theme) and "dang this song is bangin' i'm in a mood for writin' which of my friends' faves can i be really mean to"
> 
> fwiw i gave breidablik enough backstory in this to qualify as a minor fe character itself already. hopefully it's sorta interesting beyond OH YEAH. RANDOM GUN OHOHHOOO
> 
> anyway jakobs pretty hot t b h ....and uhh its not actually as sad as the summary says. probably. angst with closure makes me pop boners so maybe im not a good judge. title stopped being relevant about halfway through so feel free to consider that a cop-out in true geck fashion. pls enjoy nya :3/

It’s like trying to find a single grain in a bundle of chaff-- no, bigger; but your spirit feels about as dry.

 

It’s like trying to find a certain droplet in the ocean-- no, you’ll cry more salt and lick more from your wounds than the seas contain, vast as they are.

 

It’s like counting familiar headstones in a foreign land, and the names fade and reappear over the years; and then one day you stand overlooking Askr’s sacred grounds and realize it is no longer the land that is foreign and the names familiar.

\----

 

When you were first called to this foreign land-- not your liege’s home of Nohr or her motherland of Hoshido or even the silent kingdom Valla-- a stranger welcomed you with strange customs and unbelievable stories; put blades with unfamiliar heft in your hands and sent you to hold ground on lands you’d never heard of.

 

When you first arrived you wanted no part in this. You already  _ have _ a liege, you say coldly as the Askran prince Alfonse tells you about their land and their war.

 

(And his younger sister Sharena charges around the corner in time to catch the tail end of your disinterested,  _ “I have duties and they are not in your land.” _ Her face is completely readable like Lady Corrin’s, and the quick sequence of excitement-disappointment-pitifully imperfect attempt at a mask that flits over her features is so similar that for a moment you feel guilty. 

 

Your liege is the same way; too kind for war, even having lived one and still settling its ripples, and the spark of guilt goes cold and inconsequential when you remind yourself where your duties still lie.)

 

Compared to his sister, Prince Alfonse is a man from the same cloth as you. In his gaze you read self-enacted distance, and it isn’t forced as much as it is cold disinterest. Maybe under different circumstances the both of you could have been as bright and warm as the Askran sun, but someone’s hurt him the same way the world taught you to present thorny with teeth bared; and one day he finally tells his sister to leave you alone with a small sigh, as dismissive to her in that moment as he normally is to you. 

 

You think, maybe, he understands something of your thoughts. You can respect that. 

 

Later that day he tells you in no uncertain terms, looking straight at you--  _ through _ you,  _ above _ you in the way that royals command-- that you are an _ honored guest  _ in the kingdom of Askr and though you will not be  _ coerced _ into anything, the further they can press back Embla’s armies, the more time they can dedicate to furthering their understanding of the peculiar relic that called you here and now seems to have joined itself to your person. 

 

_ And perhaps _ , he adds,  _ a way to send you home _ .

 

In response your smile is a cordial mask, and the sentiment of disgust for such speech with its accompanying grimace buried deep.

 

It seemed to you akin to a ceremonial tome in the hands of their red-haired commander, and Prince Alfonse sighs again at the unstated inquiry when you voice it-- you’re not even sure if he realizes it, a habit shared by all four of your liege’s brothers-- but debriefs you honestly if rather distantly. You prefer it that way.

 

_ “We don’t know,” _ he says. _ “Breidablik is supposedly an inherited legendary weapon. It’s been passed down for generations, but we couldn’t figure out what it actually.. does.” _

 

_ “Until now.” _ The prince lapses into silence, contemplative.

 

( _ “Whoever the warrior that wields it, they’d be a hero chosen by the gods,” _ he adds almost reluctantly, as you process the information he’s volunteered.

 

_ A hero _ , you repeat under your breath;  _ chosen by the gods _ . A harsh chuckle bites its way from your throat like a snake, because you understand a bit more now. That must be it-- surely you’re not the only one left sorely frustrated by this turn of events. How unfortunate it must be, to expect a legendary deliverer but receive  _ you, _ who has absolutely no interest in this country nor its wars.)

 

You turn back to face the Askran prince, assessing him with none of the overly polite rules you’d apply to the scions of your liege’s homelands. Lady Corrin is your liege and you have no obligation to either Askr or its prince. If you are to be its hero foretold, then it will be without the pomp and formality you must raise like a shield in the courts your liege inhabits.

 

_ “Well then,” _ you say and somehow the voice doesn’t sound like yours,  _ “What would your country have me do--” _

 

He looks kind of taken aback by your sudden cooperation, but as you continue, his expression twists into a mild grimace at the same time a small smile slides across yours.  

 

_ “--for my freedom?” _

\----

 

Months pass that become years and then decades and after what feels like an age, Embla and the shade that haunts it is close to being neutralized at long last. 

 

Yet in many ways the hardest part of a war begins when the end draws near, and if your liege appeared suddenly and asked how things arrived at such a point as they are; ...you would be left at an uncharacteristic loss.

 

An uneasy truce against Muspell with Embla’s princess and acting regent Veronica that grew into a genuine alliance-- you put aside how much she reminds you of Lady Corrin, how similar the two princesses withering in loneliness might have ended up.

 

The remainder of Niflheim’s great knowledge, passing ancient rites and exorcising Embla’s cursed bloodline; Alfonse one day asking you to stop calling him with his title and you teasing him good-naturedly with,  _ “As you wish, my lord” _ on your tongue and a sharply knowing smile.

 

Some days you don’t know how you keep raising Breidablik’s light over the shrine and waiting expectantly for the smoke to clear. It’s been your liege many times now but it’s never been  _ her _ , and some days you find the details blurring together, and you start forgetting the things that  _ she _ was that the others called here were not.

 

In those moments you try to grasp those old precious memories, but they only grow more elusive and it’s like--

 

\--it’s like counting familiar headstones in a foreign land, and knowing the names inscribed on them by heart; and then on the day you stand overlooking Askr’s sacred grounds and realize it is the land that is yours and the names that are foreign.

 

Muspell and its armies are collapsing on themselves; in desperation or madness that’s when Surtr summons Loki’s draconic master into the physical realm proper. 

 

It’s the crisis point you knew was approaching, and suddenly the situation becomes a frenzy as four countries acquainted only through carnage unite through necessity against the lord of darkness.

 

The alliance of Niflheim’s knowledge, Muspell’s strength, and the unique abilities of Askr and Embla force Loptyr back into chains as a powerless spectre, and when the dust finally starts to settle and the frenzied chain of events slows back to a normal routine of days and nights, the tension drains with it, and every country has lost so much.

 

Alfonse died to Loptyr’s obsidian flames and the unexpected friendship that had grown between the two of you died with him, and he left you the legendary relic Breidablik that weighs heavy in your hands, and his country to rebuild from the ground up, and its remaining enemies to be hunted.

 

Some days you still climb the familiar trail to the tallest hill on the capital’s grounds; and you count the headstones in the country Alfonse left behind, recalling blurry faces and read the names inscribed in stone and memory that hold no feeling. You’ve greeted many of these names to Askr countless times and it’s been your first meeting with them each time; the peculiar heaviness in your gut only weighing harder every time you greet a face buried on your command long ago or just the other day.

 

(Soldiers die on the field. Death makes no distinction between heroes and legends and commonfolk and neither do you; after each battle you honor the fallen with a moment’s bowed head and then raise Breidablik high amongst the carnage. 

 

After the first time, there are never any bodies left after being bathed in Breidablik’s five-colored light:  _ is this it _ , you wonder, is  _ this _ how Breidablik sends someone home?

 

Though a weapon presumably incapable of taking life, Breidablik’s familiar weight stacks up little by little, and soon you think the spiral will have completed yet another turn of familiar to foreign; of keepsake to curse.)

 

\------

\------

 

Years pass. Jakob, Deliverer Foretold, still has not been freed from Askr’s relic or the legacy of its prince. Sharena grows and changes before his eyes; she becomes a hardened queen and one day Commander Anna of the Order retires and a youthful replacement from her clan takes her place. The new Anna is physically much younger but otherwise exactly the same and Jakob would find the sameness eerie; stinking of something beyond human ken, but considering it further would only be hugely hypocritical, so he does not.

 

In fact, it’s almost the same but in reverse. Jakob still looks like he’s maybe thirty and he  _ feels _ it as well, is unsettlingly fit. It’s almost certain to be tied to Breidablik, which has gone quiet after Loptyr’s defeat, though everything formally tied to it has only increased.

 

The dichotomy between mental and physical is horrible and the shade of Loki-- purged years ago from the royal bloodline of Embla, though they’d never found its wandering Prince Bruno-- greedily eyes his suffering and offers the Deliverer of Askr a deal.

 

She will let him see who he desires most dearly, but only at great cost. An offer as cliche as it is foolish, but Jakob finds himself accepting; the contract is sealed in blood and off-topic, offhand, he wonders if a lifetime ago, King Garon of Nohr faced a similar decision.

 

Breidablik had been dormant since they’d purged Loki from Embla, but it hums louder in Jakob’s gloved hands with every footfall on the worn trail to Askr’s sacred grounds, and power gathers; whispering trails of light in five hues.

 

Jakob plants his feet steady and raises Breidablik high in the shrine. 

 

“Come!” 

 

The command that echoes off tall stone monuments sounds less like his own tone and more like his liege’s lord brother, Nohr’s own crown prince-turned-king, and that sparks a moment of unfamiliar uncertainty. If Loki’s deal was the truth, his search would finally be over-- the search that had been sidetracked for years, he deliberates, for his lady liege Corrin, his reason for fighting on.

 

Shoulders squared, he inhales deep and prepares to kneel--

 

\--And the white smoke thins and finally clears, and...

 

Jakob meets the figure’s bewildered eyes with a start. The gaze he meets is blue rather than amber bordering on red, and the look is similar but not that of Lady Corrin of Nohr; though if what he’s remembering today is real, then the Alfonse in front of him has the same naive sort of innocence.

 

The realization hits like a tidal wave colored with wisps of Loki’s twisted humor, and Jakob tries to convince himself that he still remembers his liege’s face and her expressions, her laughter; but whatever scenes called from memory instead feature a different royal, one who.. by the end, at least, he’d seen as a friend rather than a royal.

 

( _ He was a useless servant who couldn’t perform any tasks properly. A child much younger than himself, Lady Corrin held her hand out to him anyway and he’d taken it, soft and unscarred. _

 

He’d been abruptly summoned to Askr and hailed as a hero of prophecy, and its prince Alfonse saw him disappointed and almost disdainful and told his sister Sharena to stop bothering, and threatened him roundabout into his supposed role.

 

_ The first memory is fiction dreamt by his traitorous brain-- Lady Corrin had been about the same age as Jakob himself when he’d arrived as her servant in the lonely Northern Fortress, and the hand he’d taken was marred with sword calluses but quivering in fear of rejection, and they’d bonded through suffering. _

 

By contrast, Jakob can picture the nuanced differences of Alfonse’s various disdainful expressions, for him when it became clear he was not the cooperative sort, for the numerous times Commander Anna’s shortcut attempts to fill their coffers failed spectacularly, even the mask version for trying not to laugh when Sharena went head over heels for Feh the owl being impossibly cute.)

 

All of it makes Jakob growl, the grimace almost instinctive. Instantly noting how it makes this younger Alfonse flinch briefly before schooling his face into a more royal-befitting control-- calm, yet far too stiff to be believable-- Jakob tries to set his own mask back in place and handles the situation-- a summoning, a new hero to the join ranks of many supporting Askr-- like rote routine.

 

( _ The spiral keeps turning _ , he thinks. The irony tastes bitter but also humorous, even, and Jakob feels a little sorry in advance for this naive baby Alfonse, a mirror image of Askr’s remaining royal when she’d been young and tried to befriend him.)

 

This purehearted Alfonse will be forced to kill him when Loki arrives for her end of the bargain.

 

There is clarity delivered with such a realization and Jakob hopes he hasn’t just undone everything the Alfonse who’d been his close friend fought and died for, and it’s real, thorny guilt he feels when he thinks about how Alfonse told him of a close friend for whom he’d never gotten closure.

 

Jakob explains Breidablik and the situation as they head back towards the castle. Each answer Alfonse accepts with eyes wide in wonder drives another thorn into the crown of thistles Askr’s Deliverer has held for years, and the scabs tear open with each step away from the capital’s tallest hill.

 

Jakob’s emotion had lain dry like weathered bones in the aftermath of Loptyr’s defeat, but now it’s a complicated burden he bleeds, and the wounds on his spirit-- the ones healed by his liege and the ones healed by mutually supporting Alfonse-- are raw and fresh by the time he gives Sharena a pared-down explanation not mentioning Loki or his lapse in judgement and drops her brother-not-brother off in her care and sleeps the remainder of the day.

\----

 

The next day Jakob feels more clear and sets about dispelling any rumors of illness; the duties Alfonse left split between himself and Sharena require his attention and so he completes them with the same practiced ease once dedicated to his liege a lifetime ago, Lady Corrin of Nohr.

 

Jakob falls into a warm routine of teaching and befriending this Alfonse, who while newly summoned, is still a legitimate scion with Askr’s lineage, and the Deliverer Foretold soon changes fluidly from its old prince’s entrusted general to its new one’s instructor and guardian. 

 

While he’d approached his new charge guarded and prepared for all sorts of developments, a road full of daily surprise unfolds day by day, week by week, and the days once again stretch into years. No one is more surprised than Jakob, but he welcomes the feeling of genuine friendship, of being depended on and trusted.

 

( _ Lady Corrin may have felt the same _ , Jakob deliberates one day, and it’s the near crowning surprise that the thought holds only warmth, and his smile is peaceful rather than a threat with bared teeth, maybe for the first time.)

\--

 

Loki hasn’t appeared to collect on their contract and Jakob knows she will soon; the knowledge hangs like a second shoe waiting to drop. But of every problem he’s lived through it’s by far the least distressing, and Jakob finds the change in his mindset undetectable by the day yet also  _ most _ unbelievable. 

 

(In another lifetime Lady Corrin of Nohr had been his liege and she’d called this unshakeability  _ resilience, _ a power grown through mutually supporting others despite hardship.)

 

It’s kind of ludicrous but it’s also a good feeling. Jakob cannot fathom what kinds of wild twists of fate led to this present, but it feels peaceful, inside and out, where he’s ended up.

 

(He and Alfonse wander through Askr’s castle garden one afternoon and Alfonse points out progress on several planting projects he’s test running, then mentions several types of trees and the properties that make them agriculturally useful, that he’d like to acquire at some point.

 

This is the kind of thing you can only do during peacetime, really, and Jakob recalls a surprisingly clear memory of himself and Corrin as kids taking a similar stroll in the Northern Fortress’s courtyard, her talking about Hoshido’s greenery and himself pointing out their Nohrian equivalents.

 

Prince Alfonse has grown a lot. With him around even Sharena has melted nearly back to her old self, and Jakob smiles faintly when he thinks about Loki coming to collect, because if he has one regret now it’s that he never got to show Lady Corrin how much he’s changed, how  _ resilient _ he’s become... how similar to her he hopes he’s become.)

\----

 

When Loki comes to collect on their deal, she flickers into being right in Jakob’s bedroom with dramatic pomp and a tiny nova of colored lights. It’s some late hour of night and reflex has him awake instantly but not reaching for a weapon. Now is a time of peace and he’s been expecting this; Loki’s reappearance.

 

_ “Well then, darling,” _ she purrs, sounding for all the world like Corrin’s sister Lady Camilla in the bout of nostalgia he’s been having,  _ “Was our contract good for you?” _

 

Jakob’s response is growing laughter and the barest hint of surprise flickers across Loki’s perfect features.

 

It takes a moment for his breathing to get under control, but he eventually says calmly with a hint of mirth,  _ “Take my soul then, as per agreement.” _

 

He slips out of the covers graceful and fluid, unlocking the panel built into the bed’s side where Breidablik rests.

 

_ “Though, I will be taking this with me; it is only fair, as it’s become part of me, is it not?”  _

 

The remainder of the sentiment hangs in the air unsaid but heavy:  _ Askr will be involved in your scheming no further. _

 

Loki studies him inscrutably for a second before her cherry-red lips curve wide and she just about doubles over in mirth. 

 

Jakob eyes the unpleasant woman disdainfully, but she only straightens up and wipes a tear from her eye at this oh-so-funny sentiment and agrees between giggles,  _ “Fair, that’s fair. Oh.. hahaha.. this is wonderful.” _

 

_ “What happens in your little homeland is of no consequence to me, darling,” _ her voice is like windchimes and Jakob doesn’t bother responding to the jive about homelands,  _ “All that matters to me is that the game remains interesting.” _

 

(Loki takes his soul according to their bargain, and Jakob disappears body and soul from Askr along with the relic Breidablik in a wash of five-colored light.

 

Before she collects his soul, Jakob proposes a second gamble, and Askr loses its Deliverer but gains the assurance of no further involvements in Loki’s games for a time. Time is long for nonhumans and Jakob doesn’t specify further, knowing the open-endedness of both sides would only make the prospect more attractive. 

 

He thinks of Alfonse building strong agricultural groundwork in the gardens, and asserts that human resilience will carry them further than divine blessings.

 

As expected, Loki is delighted and she readily accepts the bet he proposes.)

\----

  
_ “As I said, I only care that life does not grow boring,” _ she drawls,  _ “and darling, you’ve been so very entertaining.” _

**Author's Note:**

> jakob's gone through a whole life cycle here so his personality changes some; hopefully it's believable and not jus like.. straight ooc /o\
> 
> as always feel free to talk tme!! comments here, tumblr, whatever. geckcellent is my tumblr! \o/!!


End file.
